


Under their Crowning Shapes

by rabbitinthewoods



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: All the men die, Coming of Age, Gen, In a way, Women becoming Queens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:51:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitinthewoods/pseuds/rabbitinthewoods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the ash and smoke of a Rhovanion recently burned, three women step into the hollow spaces left by dead men, and discover that out of fire and grief they have risen greater than before:<br/>*The air is metallic. It burns her lips as she breathes it in, curdles in her throat until she longs for fish oil and sweat. There is a fire on the lake. It is not unlike the will-o-wisps in marshes, fetid burning of the dead leading unwary walkers to traps of weed and water. This fire has already had its fill, of course.<br/>Her father lies dead on the shore.*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peace, peace.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her father lies dead on the shore. The reflection on the water calls her warrior, murderer, queen.

The air is metallic. It burns her lips as she breathes it in, curdles in her throat until she longs for fish oil and sweat. There is a fire on the lake. It is not unlike the will-o-wisps in marshes, fetid burning of the dead leading unwary walkers to traps of weed and water. This fire has already had its fill, of course.

Her father lies dead on the shore.

His great coat has melted onto his frame. Fire took him in his cell before Bain could reach him. Her brother, bruised by the guards and burnt by tendrils of flame, had flown down to her like a hunted deer. An arm had hung limp in his sleeve, and he’d cried aloud at the sight of her. She’d pulled him to her chest.

“Peace Bain. Peace. I have you.”

They’d taken the arrow from its hiding place. The metal had been cold in her hands, reflecting nothing of the fire growing about them. They shook under the dragon’s roars, but the arrow held fast, strong as stone. It held fast as she struck guards with it, determined to capture the children of a dissenter even as the dragon burnt them out. Their flesh parted easily under its head.

Bain collapsed as they reached the windlance. She dragged him upright as easily as she would a doll. The dragon careened past. She is no archer. Bain had to guide her aim with only his words, his body crumpled by her feet. The arrow tracked its prey across the sky.

A sparrow landed on her shoulder. Bain laughed. She loosed the arrow.

All she sees is ash and blood.

They make the shore to the sound of screams and popping wood. The heat is making the water steam. Satomi greets them with a cry, the sound ripped from her throat by needles of grief. Sigrid corrals her forward, sweeping Bard into her arms as her mother wails.

“Peace mother. Peace. We are safe.”

Their father washes up behind them. Both men are taken under the shelter of the trees, where they find Tilda sat with dead eyes and weeds clung in her fists. Sigrid places Bain at her feet. Her brother may yet be saved by her sister’s arts. Tilda begins to chant, and Bain watches her.

His breaths sound clogged, like he’s a river filled with weeds and detritus, water pushing and not getting through until eventually it wells over the banks and sweeps along the floodplains in a rage. She waits for his blood to do the same. To burst out of his lungs and throat and mouth and drench the cold ground. It doesn’t. Not quite. All that shows is a trickle, leaking past his lips and down a cheek. Muscles convulse and his body bends with the effort of sucking in air. She watches as his eyes search them out, terrified, then wrench away. At the last they regard some horrors the rest of them cannot perceive.

Even in death he is not still. Breathing stops but his body yet twitches. Bain has never been restful.

Tilda continues chanting. Sigrid places a hand on her shoulder. When that does nothing she tugs until Tilda pulls away.

“Peace Tilda. Peace. He has passed.”

They bury Bard at dawn. They bury Bain at noon. At dusk Sigrid buries her skinning knife in the Master’s neck, and dumps his body in the waters of the dragon’s grave.

As a winter sun rises she buries the child of Laketown, safe in her blankets one last time. When she washes her face in the lake, soot floating on the surface and the stink of the dragon clinging to everything, the reflection on the water calls her warrior, murderer, queen.

As the Elvenking comes she is arrayed in grey and red. The sky is still full of soot and screams, and beneath its ill palette a crowd gathers to look upon the elves and see what they will do.

The Elvenking is arrayed in silver and green, like a clear spring morning. He looks across their shoreline sprawl and the carcass of their town with grief a thousand years old. He calls for the Master, for a leader, for any that would speak with him as peer.

Alfrid moves forward with a swagger that fades under elvish eyes. But his tongue still remembers its guile, his heart its arrogance, and he names to himself an honour he could never honestly earn. A brave soul names him thief, and the thief twitches. And as the thief grins and grins a roar raises behind him, a flock of waterbirds in flight, fury upon fury upon fury. The thief speaks for gold and greed and tyranny, but not for them.

The thief wilts.

The Elvenking frowns. He asks again who speaks for the lake, and only wailing is his answer. He asks after the Master.

"Dead," says a voice, and Sigrid finds that it is hers. "He keeps the dragon company."

The Elvenking's eyes settle on her, and she does not shrink from them. The swelling crowd turns to look upon her and wonder, and she does not move away. Under grey trees Satomi and Tilda hear the sudden silence, and Sigrid does not fear.

Atop an elk, with three score warriors at his back, the Elvenking of all Mirkwood and the Greenwood that was asks after her name.

Her name? Daughter of a bargeman, daughter of a brewer, sister to a witch and a dead secret keeper, killer of dragons and too-rich men, Queen of Dale and the desolation. Born of the lake, dead on the lake, drowned, drowned, drowned –

Peace Sigrid. Peace. The woman lives.

"My name? I'm Sigrid."


	2. Love, she thinks.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her king lies dead in the shallows. The blood on the wind calls her warrior, murderer, queen.

The air sits heavy above the river. The sound of the water is sluggish and slow, as if it’s being pressed down and hemmed in by the air above it. Her ears strain to catch any sound, any hint of fish or fowl. But they remain hollow. The water is giving nothing away.

Her king lies dead in the shallows.

His hair is spread out behind him like water weeds, like a feather fan dipped in tar. Its silver has faded to a dull grey. His skin is a cool blue save about his neck, where the skin rages in purple and red and all the shades of pain. Water took him, aided by orcish hands, while his warriors looked to the safety of the fragile humans in their care. Legolas is bent over him, a sketch of a figure at prayer, his grief kept within. He is silent. The air is empty save the water’s quiet murmur. She lowers herself next to him and watches his skin shudder, places a hand about him and holds him tight when he collapses into her embrace.

“Love,” she starts, and her throat clicks shut. “He did love you so.”

They had begun to usher the Lake-town folk north. Winter winds were biting at their heels, and in the western sky dark forms had corralled. The lake had faded to a paleness behind them and the desolation had risen in dust and apathy before them, and darkness found them all huddled by the river’s edge with emptiness and death on all sides. And darkness brought to them, clustered and fearful and frozen into smaller versions of themselves, a shadow. The shadow had writ upon the air two score orcs in leather and mail. The dark cloudlets of the western sky coalesced into cloudlets of bats.

And blood had fallen upon them as a flood in spring.

They make it to the morning with red and grey smattered about the desolation’s bare canvas. Her king is found still submerged in the pink waters, and there Legolas sits and stays. Others collect their dead, elves and humans brought down by doom ridden dark. Sigrid circles, arms wide in a stance designed to beat back legions. Her shrieks are torn from her by every new cold form they find. Tauriel must grip at her shoulders, shake and shake until the shrieks shrink to sobs.

“Love,” she starts, and the words stick behind her teeth. “You must remember love.”

The sky is filled with smoke blown north. The earth is covered with a people lost, the children of trauma fleeing their birth. Orcs sit bound and close, spared their end in the dark and cowering in the weak sun, gleaming elves stood like pillars of glass as jailers. One orc sits – Bolg, she knows, his name is Bolg – back straight and eyes proud and hands thick enough to hold down an elven head. She turns away. Follows the sight of golden hair to an emptying shell. Legolas looks at her, and they know what they must do.

They wed. Two ribbons dipped in the tainted waters of the River Running, burnt by dragon fire, fetid with the stink of blood and snow. She ties them about their joined wrists and notes how his shake, kisses lips growing cold, lies in the fading afternoon with a form so loved it is beyond speaking and waits as grief drains out all it is till she is holding a corpse.

He is so quiet. Legolas was never quiet for long. But waiting does not make him speak.

Her people watch her as she flees the tent. Her hair is fire in the fading day. The river is a ribbon of light. By its edge Gandalf finds her, and asks her why.

“Love,” she starts, and her grief bursts out her mouth. “We wed for love.”

They bury Thranduil as the moon appears. They bury Legolas as the stars appear. As clouds appear Tauriel buries half a dozen arrows into Bolg’s chest, and leaves his body out in the air for the carrion birds.

As the stars look on she buries the Captain of Mirkwood’s guard, swathed in her plain leathers one last time. When she renews her strength in a western breeze, snow swirling along and the sound of mourning suppressing all, the blood on the wind calls her warrior, murderer, queen.

As they parlay with the King-under-the-Mountain she is wrought in bronze and green. The air is clogged with rock dust and weeping, and within its floating mire refugees and warriors huddle to gaze up at the dwarves and see what they will do.

The King-under-the-Mountain is wrought in gold and blue, like an autumn noon by a deep pool. He scans their ragged retreat and the hint of smoke to the south with an oddness in his eyes new and unseen. He summons the Elvenking, the Master, evoking empty names.

Mithrandir shuffles forward with bent back and weary face, and it wearies further below the King-under-the-Mountain’s frown. Yet he recalls his grace, and wit and diplomacy, and writes with his thoughts a dozen worthy lines. But a dwarf snarls _wizard_ in syllables like crushing blows. And as the wizard talks and talks mutters whirl up about him, an eddy catching at the wind, curiouser and curiouser and curiouser. The wizard speaks for plots and may good things, but he does not speak for them.

The wizard bows over.

The King-under-the-Mountain glares. He summons again a speaker from them, and only a susurrus is his answer. He asks after the Elvenking.

“Dead,” a voice calls out, and Tauriel wonders at the movement of her own lips. “His soul is gone west.”

The King-under-the-mountain frowns at her, and she does not bow under it. The sighing refugees bend their eyes upon her and wait, and she does not flee from them. Astride a brown palfrey to her left Sigrid waits in the rising stillness, and Tauriel does not tremble.

Behind a wall, with all of the mountain’s grandeur at his rear, the King-under-the-mountain and of all Durin’s folk asks after her name.

Her name? Daughter of a hunter, daughter of a singer, wife to a friend who was king for a day, killer of evil and her own defenceless prisoners, Queen of Mirkwood and the Greenwood that was. Born under the stars, dead under the stars, choked, choked, choked –

Love, Tauriel thinks, and she sucks in a breath. She must love.

“My name? I’m Tauriel.”


	3. Hope is.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her uncle lies dead in a lee. The ring of the stone calls her warrior, murderer, queen.

The air stinks of soot. They have started burning bodies, ash floating before her eyes like puffs of cotton caught on a breeze. The ground is obscured by a clutter of flesh and metal. The fires and the ghostly forms that move to them with their burdens are the only inklings of life.

Her uncle lies dead in a lee.

His armour is bent like cheap tin. All caved in. Air took him, fierce winds bearing him off Ravenhill as bats robbed him of his sight and goblins of his balance. Kíli had looked at her like she was their mother remade in battle’s red birthing bed. Eyes begged her to deny their reality. He had screamed as she’d thrown herself down beside Thorin and taken in the wreck of his body. The scream had come again as an arrow’s herald, its fletching sprouting from his leg. He could not stand. He had clung to her.

“Hope is with us, Kíli. We’re winning, and we’ll see the end.”

Orcs had descended on them as flies on a corpse. Fíli’s eyes could not always catch where she put her blade. Kíli shook and shook and shot. His screams set them as a beacon. His arrows set them as a trap. Azog had come pale as the moon, snarl affixed to his face. No-one else had come. They were cut off. They were alone.

Red hands kept her blade up. Her brother’s words kept her feet moving. And when Kíli had planted a dwarven arrow in Azog’s eye the blue fletching had pushed her forward. Her blade had slid slick between the orc’s ribs.

Her world has narrowed to canvas and cloth.

They make it to the tents with ice and blood upon their tongues. Kíli is lost to unconsciousness, and has to be wrested from her arms. Dust and oil announces Balin at her back, and the older woman holds her as the healers work. Fíli cannot see for tears, cannot hear for wailing, but she can smell the blood and poison well enough. Balin weeps as only kin can, and Fíli turns to her bereft of sufficient succour.

“Hope is to be had, Balin. He is strong, he’ll pull through.”

Time seems set to make a liar of her. The canvas can barely hold all that he is, her brother, all the maybe-soon’s and the I-promise-so’s. He ripples upon the healer’s bed, wavers under Óin’s tender hand, shakes away from medicine and blood both. Her place beside his head lets her smell his sweat and his fear. There is a taste of metal at the back of her throat that she knows is his death. He quakes once, twice, and is gone. All that lies in the bed is a husk.

His face bears the last of his tears. Fíli can taste her own as they fall. But Kíli does not cry with her.

Half the company fills the tent, those that are yet hale. They weep as she leaves, and she finds the clearer air painful to inhale. Tauriel is a beacon on the path, and Fíli fists a hand in her sleeve.

“Hope is remaining, Tauriel. It is all that remains.”

They bury Thorin with the mountain’s heart at his breast. They bury Kíli with the mountain’s roots at his back. Near the mountain’s mouth Fíli buries her sword in Gandalf’s gut, and throws his body into a hidden pit.

As the mountain’s shadow lengthens Fíli buries the Lady of the Blue Mountains, wrapped in her cheap furs one last time. When she rests her bones at the mountain’s feet, dust drifting up from the rock and the taste of medicinals blanketing aught she knows, the ring of the stone calls her warrior, murderer, queen.

As the Lady of Lothlórien crests the hills of Dale she is fashioned in cream and blue. The clouds speak of snow and bitter healing, and under their crowning shapes three queens and all their wounded folk take to their feet to meet the Galadhrim host and see what they will do.

The Lady of Lothlórien is fashioned in white, like winter sunset caught upon a clutch of pearls. She rests her eyes upon each tattered tent in turn with a patience born of encompassing calm. She beseeches Gandalf to step forth, for the lords and ladies of their gathered peoples to come to her.

Dain marches forward with a cautiousness unlike him, but he regains his thunder as the Lady smiles. His voice recollects its might, its duty, and he talks with little courtesy or prosy manners but with much truth. Though while he speaks a silence grows, and torches rise like fireflies behind him and about him, grief present in flame, brighter and brighter and brighter. Ironfoot speaks for loyal hearts and firm wills, but he does not speak for them.

He turns to her, hidden as she is in the crowd, and bends his knee.

The Lady of Lothlórien quirks a brow. Her voice rings clear in her query, but only the scent of fire is her answer. She asks after Gandalf.

“Dead,” a voice replies, and Fíli feels her own tongue move. “Vanished into shadow.”

The Lady of Lothlórien focuses her gaze on her, and she does not cower at its force. The collected peoples shift and bend around her, and she does not duck and hide. Tauriel and Sigrid keep pace as she moves forward, and her knees do not buckle.

Tall and terrible, with the ages of the world on her shoulders, the Lady of Light asks after her name.

Her name? Daughter of a princess, daughter of a weaver, sister to a brave fool of a bowman, killer of armies and meddling wizards, Queen-under-the-Mountain and all of Durin’s folk. Born in the mountains, dead in the mountains, crushed crushed crushed –

Hope is before her. She must grasp it.

“My name? I’m Fíli.”


End file.
